Friday 21 April 2017

Loitering in Droitwich


It has indeed been a day for pottering, though to some effect. After a lazy start, I did a few jobs in the engine room which had been hanging round. A couple of fuel joints had started weeping a touch, so I nipped them up. I topped up the engine start battery and got out the stock container of phosphoric acid. I dilute the 80% concentrate down to 10% to use as descaler in the toilet, much cheaper than buying the pre-diluted stuff from the toilet supplier. (As in £20 for 5 litres of concentrate rather than around £18 for 1 litre of dilute.)

Admittedly, you have to be sensible with the concentrated stuff – I do the dilution in the shower tray, wearing nitrile gloves, of course. But then I wear gloves for pretty well any work in the engine bay, diesel or used oil not being good for your skin either.

Having done this and tidied up, we popped into town for a ream of A4 copier, since we'd run out, and another loaf of bread to keep us going for a few days. It's a classic irony that, having searched about in a bit of a hurry yesterday for either a bakers or a shop selling pies, not finding one and getting bread from Waitrose, we've now found two independent bakers and a specialist pie shop.

Back at the boat we sorted some admin jobs like applying for new bus passes which were waiting for us to have the paper supply. This involved a bit of a wrestle with the printer. Although the ink cartridges were quite new, the black one had stopped working, presumably dried out with lack of use, and no matter how much cleaning we gave it, it wouldn't come back to life.

It's the problem of having a printer that's only used for a few months of the year.

Office work all sorted, we then sallied forth to the Gardeners Arms for lunch. Many thanks for the recommendation, Jennie, it was indeed excellent, especially the pies. There's obviously something about Droitwich and pies.

We had a bit of a recovery sit down in the boat after that, then at two o'clock took a walk up the Junction canal. The Salwarpe is very low and there's 2.1 metres headroom under the M5, so hopefully we should be ok – Sheila's taken the plant pots off the roof as she does for Harecastle which is about that height too.

We'll have a quiet evening, then tally ho for Hanbury Junction tomorrow.


Location:Droitwich

3 comments:

John and Jenny said...

Read your struggle with your ink cartridge - little tip: try a saucer of warm water (on the hotter side) then gently lower the cartridge in the water (where the ink comes out), so it's only JUST touching the water. After a second or so a little trail of ink will leak out - this means it's been unblocked. Dab the wet bit with a piece of kitchen towel to dry. You should see little dabs of ink on the paper. Hope that works for you. Take care though not to touch any 'technical' bits as grease from your fingers could make the cartridge useless.

Jenny, sitting on the Llangollen, soon to be the Shroppie

Jennie said...

I am so glad you enjoyed your lunch Bruce and Sheila - we are having lunch there on Monday and probably dinner at some point whilst we are there for the Festival. If you are at Hanbury locks after 10:00 there should be a VLK on duty (if the calendar is correct!) called Nigel. I don't think I know him, so no point in saying hi from us! Are you heading on up to go through Tardebigge? It might be long, but it is one of our favourite flights - so pretty. They were greasing them the other day, so they should not be too difficult. Jennie

Bruce in Sanity said...

Thanks, both, more helpful advice! I'll remember the hot water trick next time, could save a lot of money.

Jennie, yes, we're heading for Tardebigge. We quite like that flight, actually, especially the mooring in the pound below the top lock.

Best wishes

Bruce